After a form of rough justice was administered to an Uber driver, the justice system has added charges of rape and kidnapping against a man in connection with an incident that took place early Saturday near Olympia, Washington.
Ahmed Ali, 58, has been accused of picking up a woman from a bar and taking her to a secluded area, KCPQ-TV in Seattle reported Monday.
The woman used the rideshare service because she was too drunk to drive home from a bar, according to court documents.
Police said the woman’s father arrived on the scene and attacked the suspect.
Officers initially responded to what they thought was a weapons violation, according to KCPQ.
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A 911 caller reported hearing someone say, “I don’t want to kill you,” followed by two gunshots, a Thurston County Sheriff’s Office report said, according to KOMO-TV.
A deputy who responded stopped a car driven by the man who was later arrested. He was bleeding from his head and hands, and the deputy noticed a cellphone, a T-shirt and one shoe in the back seat of the vehicle.
The driver said those items were not his and attempted to flee the scene. Meanwhile, other deputies contacted the family and a fuller picture of the incident emerged.
The victim took an Uber home while her friends went to another bar, the report said, but they were concerned when they reached her house and she was not there.
Did this father do the right thing?
The victim’s father was notified. After a location tracking search showed her phone was in a remote location near the Nisqually River, he and other family members drove there.
The report said the victim was found in the back set of the Uber with her clothes off. Family members said that as they arrived, the driver was “jumping over the center console” and appeared to be pulling up his pants.
Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Brooks said the woman’s father, believing his daughter was being assaulted, “beat up the driver a little bit” and fired two shots, according to The Olympian.
According to KOMO, the sheriff’s report said family members assaulted the driver while getting him away from the victim.
During a Monday hearing, Thurston County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rudy Breteler said the driver’s injuries were “substantial.”
An Uber driver in Olympia faces charges of rape and kidnapping, with the victim’s father stopping the alleged assault after using phone tracking to locate his daughter. https://t.co/qTMCQk6EHL
— FOX 13 Seattle (@fox13seattle) June 18, 2024
Deputies said the woman was too intoxicated to be capable of consent and did not remember anything from the time she entered the Uber until she arrived home.
“Marking (victim) as dropped off in the Uber app, yet continuing to transport her to another location, demonstrated (suspect’s) intent to conceal (victim’s) location where he believed no one could find her so that he could sexually assault her,” Breteler wrote in a probable cause declaration.
Thurston County Superior Court Judge John Skinder set Ali’s bail at $100,000 at Monday’s hearing and said he must wear a GPS monitor and cannot contact the victim, possess weapons or work on any rideshare platform if he is bailed out.
“The driver’s behavior is appalling and has no place in our society or on the Uber platform,” Uber told KCPQ when asked for comment.
“We take reports of this nature very seriously and removed the driver’s access to the platform as soon as we were made aware of the incident,” the rideshare company said. “We have a dedicated team standing ready to assist law enforcement with their investigation.”
